3/27/10 Emerald City

My eyes bulged out. My jaw dropped. My breathing quickened. Or maybe slowed. I dunno, but I got lightheaded one way or another.

Everything’s so green. Every field we pass swells with growing wheat, still grass-green. Behind the fields, trees drip with leaves. Bushes fill the gaps between.

After years in my barren mountains, I’m intoxicated by the lushness.

A sign we passed called this place Morocco’s Green City. I wondered if that was an environmental designation, but it seems more likely to reflect the simple fact that this place looks like Frank L. Baum’s Emerald City, without Dorothy’s green glasses. So that’s what I’ll call it: Emerald City, my home for the next week.